With these screenings at the Linwood Dunn Theater, the Academy presents the results of the latest preservation efforts by the Academy Film Archive: two recently rediscovered silent films that were once thought to be lost. Triumph stars Lon Chaney and Dorothy Phillips as lovers caught in a backstage romantic triangle. The Blood Ship features Richard Arlen and Jacqueline Logan in a tale of kidnapping, shanghaied sailors and a mutiny off the coast of San Francisco.

Triumph (1917) (fragment)
The loss of many of Lon Chaney’s earliest film performances makes the resurfacing of the first three reels of Triumph a welcome event.  This melodrama about an actress in love with a playwright and the stage manager blackmailing her for her affections offers a unique glimpse into Chaney’s career before his classic performances in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.  Photographs and title cards have been added to complete the story for viewers.

Directed by Joseph De Grasse.  Scenario Fred Myton.  With Dorothy Phillips, Lon Chaney, William J. Dyer.  Bluebird Photoplays.  Silent.  35 mm.  40 mins. (3 of 5 original reels).

The Blood Ship (1927)
After years of having all but the last ten minutes of this film, the recent discovery of a 16mm print of the final reel permits The Blood Ship to be screened in its entirety for the first time since its original release.  A seafaring adventure drenched in intrigue and skullduggery, this silent Columbia feature stars Hobart Bosworth as a man in search of his kidnapped child after serving time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  Richard Arlen co-stars as his young accomplice.

Directed by George B. Seitz.  Presented by Harry Cohn.  Scenario Fred Myton.  Based on the novel The Blood Ship by Norman Springer.  Cinematography Harry Davis.  With Hobart Bosworth, Jacqueline Logan, Richard Arlen, Walter James, Fred Kohler, James Bradbury Sr.  Columbia Pictures.  Silent.  35mm.  70 mins.